My Groom Walked Out, So His Brother Took His Place novel · Chapter 9 of 32

Chapter 9: Separate Rooms

Oma Ottilie took me out to the peach shed after lunch, and she did not ask me if I wanted to go.

It was a long tin building at the end of the orchard road, open on both sides, with packing tables and a hundred empty crates.

She sat on an upturned crate with her cane across her knees.

I stood.

"Sit," she said.

"I'll stand, ma'am."

"Then you'll be tired. Suit yourself."

She looked at me a long time.

"I heard you put my son's check in his whiskey."

"Yes, ma'am," I said.

"I'd have paid money to see it."

I almost laughed.

"I watched the wedding," Oma said. "A cousin sent me the video. I watched it six times on that little telephone."

She tapped the cane on the dirt floor. "I watched Wendell walk out. I know why he did. A weak boy raised by a man who only cares about the shape of things."

"And Jude?"

"I'm coming to Jude."

She looked at the orchard.

"I won't tell you what's in a man's head, child. I'm too old to be wrong in front of a girl. But I know my grandson. He doesn't say yes to his father. Not since he was twelve years old."

"He said it last night. I heard him," I said.

"Then ask him why."

"I asked him in the study. He said it wasn't what I thought."

"And what did you say?" she asked.

"I told him to let go of me."

Oma made a dry noise.

"You ask him again," she said. "You ask him properly. Not in a doorway with your chin in the air."

"Ma'am, with respect, I don't think I want to know."

"Of course you do," said Oma. "You just don't want to be the one who has to ask."

That night, I walked down the upstairs hall in my bare feet.

The ranch house was dark except for one yellow stripe under the last door on the left.

I had passed that door four times since the wedding without once looking at it.

I stood in front of it with my hand up.

I thought about Oma and her cane.

I thought about the check, and the yes, sir, and the she doesn't suspect.

I thought: I don't want to ask.

I thought: I want something simpler than the answer.

I knocked.

The door opened right away.

He had been standing behind it, in sweatpants and no shirt, with his hair damp.

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